i'm well aware this should remain unspoken
by imperfectandchaotic
Summary: It's almost as though they've done this before, like they've done it countless times; Lydia will never know for certain how they arrived here, at this point where their hands intertwined is as familiar as her own heartbeat, but they are and she can only be grateful. [2nd in the '(with your help now) I will be alright' series]


**Author's Notes:** honestly these past two weeks were just way too much for my Lydia/Stiles + Lydia + STILES emotions. how do you even otp, honestly. shipper alpha president scott mccall, honour on your cow.

(contains minor lydia/parrish + stiles/malia – fight me)

* * *

The feeling that something is wrong is pulling long before she receives his text.

 _Hey, feeling sick – won't be at school._

There isn't time to question, not really, so Lydia replies quickly — _Feel better - I'll come by after school with updates?_ — and steps into the school with Malia, holding the novel the other girl had stolen from Tracy Stewart's room. The feeling intensifies; the cover image is familiar in a way that Lydia can't really explain. It makes her nervous. _  
_

"Have you talked to Stiles since yesterday?" she asks Malia as they round the corner towards homeroom. The werecoyote shakes her head.

"He's sick," she says, shrugging. "He chased the author's name, but that's all."

Lydia presses her lips together, but _The Dread Doctors_ (she doesn't want to give them this name, doesn't want to give them power, but how do you fight something that has no identity?) pulls her attention. The paperback feels heavy in her bag, as if its spine were bound in bricks instead of pages.

Stiles does not text her back.

That is the first sign.

—

When Scot confirms her recognition of the man in the acknowledgements — of where they can find him — Lydia is largely unsurprised. _Of course he's a supernaturally institutionalized three eyed man,_ she thinks. The surprise comes later.

"I told Stiles you'd meet him at his place," Scott says at last bell. Lydia pauses mid-reach for her biology textbook. "I told him where we're going."

The unsettled feeling from this morning returns, sharply. "Isn't he sick?" she asks, fully expecting Scott to shrug. He does.

"Not sick enough for this," he says, sounding strangely _certain_. Lydia can't decide if she wants to read into the alpha's expression; Scott looks away before she can. "We'll go in together." There is that confidence still in his voice, as if he wants to reassure her.

Brunski's large and twisted face flashes in her mind's eye. Lydia slams her locker shut a little harder than strictly necessary.

"Seven?" she asks, false bravado, and Scott nods.

She walks away before he can catch her hands shaking.

—

The Sheriff isn't home when she arrives on the Stilinskis doorstep, but the door is unlocked.

"Stiles?" she calls, turning down the familiar path toward his room. His door is ajar; Lydia catches the pale arch and knobs of his spine disappearing beneath a t-shirt and has to force her hand to reach for the doorframe.

"Hey."

He jerks around so violently that Lydia nearly flinches back. Stiles doesn't look embarassed at being caught unawares — if anything, his face is paler. The board is nowhere in sight.

"Hey. Just—" He looks at the floor. Takes a breath. Lydia steels herself, unsure of what's coming, but sure that something is. "Just give me a second and we can go, okay?"

So much for that theory.

"Are you sure?"

Stiles catches her uncertainty — she needs to get better at hiding it from his eyes — and scowls, grabbing his hoodie from his bed. "Lydia, I'm going with you," he says, as though he won't be dissauded from Eichen House no matter what she does, but the part of Lydia that cannot forget their trauma there wants to try anyway.

"I thought you said you were sick," she says, letting a pale suspicion colour her words. Stiles' fingers tighten around his hoodie.

"Slightly under the weather," he replies, like he barely allows it to be true. A voice inside Lydia is getting louder.

"You don't have to come," she insists. "Malia's not going either."

"Malia's not going," Stiles retorts, "because she knows that place is a nightmare asylum of insanity and death, okay?"

 _Because she hates what happened to her there and you'd never make her go back, ever._

"Let's go." His face pinches as he shrugs into his sweater – the voice is practically shouting.

"What was that?"

Stiles pauses too long. "What was what?"

"You winced." The suspicion from before is darker now, truer.

"I have a bad elbow."

 _Liar,_ she wants to say, but then she remembers ( _hey — turn it off!)._ "It was your shoulder."

Stiles is scowling again. "Pain radiates," he says, as if she had no idea. "It does that."

Lydia doesn't think to move, she just _does_ (because Stiles will never push her away and they both know it). She wants to demand answers, to demand that he stay, because that place haunts him still and she can see it in his eyes — but there is something else there, too.

"You are _not_ going without me."

It makes it hard to keep his gaze, sometimes.

"You remember what happened to Deaton when he talked to Valack?"

"Scott and Kira will be there."

Lydia isn't even sure why they're arguing about this — they are always better together — but she wants to protect him as much as he wants to protect her. Stiles is practically glaring.

"I'm not letting you go to a place where one of the orderlies almost killed you."

The feminist in Lydia bristles, but she sets that feeling aside for what matters more, right now. "He almost killed _you too_!" she shouts back at him, even though that's a useless detail in his eyes and she knows it.

"And we're both still alive," Stiles retorts. "See? Teamwork."

His sarcasm is frustrating in a way it's never been before; Lyda cannot summon a reply fast enough before he is slipping past her and she has to catch up.

—

"For the record," she says as they pull up to familiar and terrible gates, "I'm fine."

Stiles has been silent the entire drive over. When he looks from her eyes to her side where the days-old stiches sit — so quickly she almost doesn't catch it — and back again, Lydia nearly falters.

"Noted," he says, and she almost smiles. "Come on."

Lydia will never feel right within Eichen House walls ( _never again_ , says a voice, _you are not safe_ ) and the anxiety she's been trying to ignore for three flights of stairs only triples when Scott and Kira are stuck in the hall, trapped by mountain ash. She is suddenly fiercely glad that Stiles had won their argument; judging by the faint pressure of all of his fingers on her back, he is too.

Stiles' fingers slide over her shoulder ( _you're fine he's fine you're safe)_ until they land on the tiny bandage where her tattoo sits — miraculously untouched despite everything. He presses; Lydia exhales.

Stiles lets go and she wants to ask him not to.

—

The man says, "We're all works in progress," and "from an old cellmate," and Lydia wants to spin on her heel and never return.

But the desire to _know_ trumps everything. Even her fear.

Dr. Valack is about as cryptic and frustrating as Lydia expects — which is to say a lot, and very. The man goads Stiles with talk of stuck spirits and the suspicion that something is very wrong feels impossible to ignore.

She's right about him being the author; she'd guessed as much as soon as their conversation had began.

"Why write the book in the first place?" Stiles asks.

"I wrote it because no one believed me." Dr. Valack still sounds angry about it. Lydia wonders how long he's carried this knowledge inside him before they appeared, seeking answers to questions only he could understand. A faint twist of empathy curls in her chest. "Because no one listened."

Lydia can feel Stiles looking at her and is strangely afraid to look back.

Valack demanding a scream is honestly not the most strange thing Lydia has experienced, but a warning stirs in her stomach. The black recorder conjures memories of other Eichen House rooms; she can feel tension from Stiles in the very air between them. She knows he'll protest — which is why he rips the device from her hands rather than give this pyscho what he wants — but Lydia wants answers.

Especially after being reprimanded by a three-eyed man about awakening the nematon. It stings in an old, sharp way.

 _Allison._

Their leading of the Dread Doctors into Eichen House via Kira's kitsune element well — that is just all kinds of unfortunate.

—

The hall is plunged into darkness ( _not s_ _afe_ ). Lydia swallows a gasp but jumps when Stiles' hand finds her back almost immediately ( _safe)_ , until a backup of some kind throws eerie pale light everywhere.

"Hit record!" Dr. Valack shouts, slamming the glass of his cell. Lydia feels Stiles leap back with her. "Do it now, it costs you nothing!"

"But it's worth something to you," Stiles spits back, "so you're not getting it for free."

"What does the book do?" Lydia asks, weighing time over the multitude of questions warring for purchase and priority. Dr. Valack stares; she can only wonder if he is as desperate as they are, if he can feel death in half-heard footfalls down the stairs, in this frisson of fear down her neck.

It is Stiles' turn to shout. " _Tell us."_

The man seems to sense their resolve. "I told you — it opens your eyes."

"How _?_ "

Valack rapidly explains memory centers and triggering using the novel, of seeing the Doctors and Lydia finds she can't breathe — which is most alarming because she cannot understand why. She has a flash of losing consciousness before her surgery; it is foggy like the dream of a memory she's since forgotten. The image slams forward in her mind's eye and the air seems to close in around her.

"So all we have to do is read the book?"

"If you've seen them, if they've done something to you, the book will help you remember." Dr. Valack doesn't appear crazed or fanatic, just angry and so _convinced_ of his truth that Lydia can barely look at him. "Now give me what I want!"

Peter Hale would have turned and left this man to rot; Lydia holds her hand out for the recorder.

Stiles' fingers close around hers for just a second too long, a hesitation that makes her heart go still. Lydia has to look at him before she is pulling in a scream like she hasn't in a long time. They make her vulnerable in a way that she hates; Stiles must know (of course he knows) because his hand is touching her back again, grounding her.

An alarm begins to blare as Lydia slams the recorder back into the slot. "Tell us what they want."

Stiles is looking down the hall. "Lydia I think we need to get out of here."

She will not leave without answers. "What are they trying to do?"

"Read the book," Dr. Valack says. "Anyone who's come into contact with them."

"Lydia, we've gotta go." Stiles' hand is firmer on her back now, insistent. "Now."

Valack shouts after them; it is unsatisfying and unsettling and part of Lydia knows that she will regret what she has just done.

But then Stiles is pressing her forward, leading her tightly by the hand (she had barely even noticed, it was so easy — like breathing) as they turn the corner to find Scott and Kira gone. So Stiles chooses another doorway and they are full out running. She doesn't know where he thinks they're going ( _it doesn't matter_ , is the fleeting thought, _you'd follow him anywhere_ ) but Lydia doesn't have the breath or room in her panicked chest to ask questions as they wind long halls and duck a corner into a wide, empty room.

There is no door.

Stiles slides behind an extending section of wall and tugs. Lydia suddenly finds herself flush against him, held tight by his arm across her sternum, so close that she can feel his breath over her shoulder and his heart pounding against her back. Her mind struggles — _safe/unsafe Stiles' hands/Eichen House_ — and Lydia has to swallow with great difficulty before her breath goes quiet and she can listen.

There is an awful shuffing of steady footsteps; Lydia isn't sure it's possible to be _closer_ to Stiles, but his grip tightens and some ridiculous part of her feels better anyway.

—

They wait for what feels like hours, but it can't be. Stiles' heart is still like a drum beat against her own — fast and nearly irregular. His breath is harsh in her ear but regardless, Lydia takes a strange comfort in it.

Lights flicker on and she manages to speak. "I think we're okay." He is silent. "Stiles."

Stiles won't let go and that same ridiculous part of her is grateful. "No it's not."

He's right, of course. None of this is okay.

"Everything that happened — everything that's gonna happen, it's on us."

Lydia wants, desperately, to understand where his mind is, to ask him what's _wrong,_ but her throat is too tight.

"It's our fault."

Lydia can't find the words at first; she curls her hand around his arm ( _safe_ ) and something comes unglued. "It's our responsibility."

Stiles doesn't relax — he barely even speaks — until they're out of the building, dragging both Scott and Kira into the Jeep, until Eichen House disappears from the rearview.

He doesn't let go of her hand, either.

—

Jordan, thankfully, does not need further convincing to teach her the basics of hand-to-hand combat.

Not after the department finds eight empty holes ( _graves)_ in the lacrosse field.

Lydia honestly doesn't want to think about it. _The Dread Doctors_ has been burning a hole in her bag for days, so she can only hope some honest-to-god combat training will provide a sufficient distraction. The deputy seems to pick up on her state of mind and speaks only to direct her; Lydia is grateful.

She's touched at his concern too, but the memory of Tracy's attack — of her mother's stricken expression under bright hospital lights — is too fresh and Lydia wants to be rid of that feeling, of that vulnerability, more than ever. **  
**

The eye candy, well.

Just a bonus.

The flash of the doctors jars her out of what are honestly only mildly alarming but also confusing jitters — but Lydia would take attraction over terror any day.

"You okay?" Parrish asks, and Lydia only half lies.

"Muscle memory."

Jordan, in a now familiar display of grace, doesn't press.

"Ready to go again?"

—

It takes him another fifteen minutes (after he insists on a real break) to ask.

"What's this?"

At first, she has no idea what he's talking about.

"What's what?"

Lydia watches Parrish stretch one arm over his head and point at his back. She bites her lip, feeling oddly more vulnerable now than when she did twenty minutes ago, brandishing her healing scar like a weapon.

This, of course, is vastly different.

"Just a tattoo," she says, aiming for mildly conversational and unsure if she succeeds. Jordan nods. He doesn't ask of what, and Lydia can't tell if he can read the struggle in her eyes, or if he's just being as extremely polite as she knows him to be.

She also isn't sure why she then volunteers the information, but it comes spilling out anyway.

"It's an arrow," she says, suddenly unable to look straight at him. "For my friend Allison."

Lydia watches Jordan nod again out of the corner of her eye, a solemnity in his expression.

"Archer, right?" he asks, very softly. Lydia's throat tightens. All she can do is nod. When she manages to look at him, the deputy's eyes are kind. "She probably would've been a better teacher than me."

She hasn't felt this kind of grief in a while, but somehow Lydia manages to smile. _She would have told me you're too distracting._ "Maybe." _  
_

Jordan looks at her for another brief moment before he smiles, rises from his seat and extending a hand down to her. "C'mon," he says, pulling her gently to her feet. "There's something else I wanted to show you."

—

The bookclub, as he calls it, is naturally Stiles' idea. After Malia explained her recent brush with oncoming traffic, he insists that they convene somewhere to finish the book together. No one disagrees.

"Maybe I should have my mother should read it," Lydia says, pushing down a familiar pinch of guilt. "She might remember a girl with a tail leaping off the ceiling and attacking everyone." The sarcasm helps.

"If it works," Stiles reminds her, ever the pragmatist.

But Lydia can't shake the feeling from Eichen House — especially now. "It has to."

"What does that mean?"

"I..." She hesitates and is unsure why. "I think I saw them during my surgery." Stiles' gaze is practically heating her face. "When I look at the cover of the book," Lydia continues, "it's almost like a..." She can't find a word for it.

"A memory trying to surface," Theo says, not like an offering, but as though he _knows_.

"Yeah," Lydia admits, tearing her eyes from the dark shade of green. She can't read Theo's expression — the knot of suspicion she's been feeling in her gut curls tighter.

"Isn't that what Valack wanted when he wrote it?" Kira asks.

"If they did something to me," Lydia says, that vulnerability and anger rising in her again, "I want to know what it is."

She doesn't wait around for anyone to ask any more questions. Lydia parks herself in a single armchair in Kira's living room with the book in her lap.

She has to take a deep breath before she can find her page.

When Stiles and Malia return with a pot of tea, Kira declares that her eyes are killing her and goes upstairs to her room; Scott eyes follow and Lydia tries not to worry at the worry in his expression. Malia takes Kira's spot on the couch, and Stiles sprawls on the floor by her feet. He wraps a hand around Malia's ankle and taps his fingers there as he reads; his girlfriend just smiles a little and makes a 'what a goof' sort of face at Lydia, who can only smile in kind.

Lydia doesn't feel anything besides pangs of hunger and exhaustion as she reaches the back cover of the book, and by then most of the pack is already asleep. She can feel eyes on her in the dark of the room; Stiles' gaze is as unsurprising as it is comforting.

 _Okay?_ he mouths, and she nods slowly, even though something in her has been unsettled for hours.

She can still feel his gaze on her as she falls asleep — it is perhaps the thing that banishes her uneasy dreams.

—

As much as Lydia enjoys school, she is not a fan of the way AP Bio keeps mirroring their supernatural lives.

"Once an invasive species is introduced, everything changes."

She doesn't want Theo to be right about Sydney, nor does she want to be complicit in her teacher's calloused dismissal of their classmate.

But she needs answers.

Having a hole appear in the side of Sydney's head and jar her back to first grade?

Not quite the answer Lydia was hoping for.

 _They're coming, Lydia._ She wants to scream or cry or throw up. But she can't do anything. _They're coming for all of us._

"Lydia?" And then Scott's voice, pulling her back. " _Lydia."_

His face swims before her own and then sharpens; she can feel his hands, warm and sure. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," she says, though even Lydia can feel her hands trembling. Scott's are steady over hers and she thinks, _true alpha._ "Fine."

"You remembered something," Theo prompts from above her head, and she nods, frustration and fear twisting in her stomach.

"Not about the Dread Doctors," she admits. "Nothing about them or the surgery."

"What was it?" Scott asks, clearly as confused as she is. He and Theo pull her gently to her feet.

"My grandmother," Lydia replies, easing down into a chair only half-aware she's even doing so. "at Eichen House."

Her mother bursting into the room is a blessing and a curse both at once; convincing her that she's alright takes more energy and effort than Lydia thinks even possible right now.

"Was it a blackout?" Her mom asks, something just _off_ enough in her eyes to give Lydia pause. "Did you faint?"

But she won't question the out, given in full conscience or not. "Yeah," she manages. "I fainted."

Her mother's hand smoothing through her hair doesn't feel like anything and it scares her.

"Mom I'm fine," Lydia says again. "Promise."

She knows one of these days that she'll have to sit her mother down for The Talk — and then perhaps a round or two with the Sheriff and Mrs. McCall — and Lydia understands now the way Stiles had hesitated all of the year before.

She has never been so afraid of losing her mother, before.

(It's hard to know whether that is a good or bad thing.)

—

By the time Lydia and Stiles nearly collide in the hall, it is hard to tell who was looking for whom.

"Lydia!"

"Hey—" she starts, but his hands are already on her shoulders, peering at her face.

"Scott told me." Stiles' thumb brushes the exposed line of her collarbone. Lydia figures the best course of action is just to submit to his worried inspection and stays very still, holding in a bemused smile. "You sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," Lydia insists, for her own benefit as much as his. "Stiles, are you busy? Could you take a ride with me?"

He blinks at her, as if he's trying to measure her honesty, before he nods. "Where are we going?"

Lydia shrugs her bag higher on her shoulder. "The hospital."

To Stiles' credit, they have left the school behind them before he asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Lydia can only hold his gaze a moment, suddenly glad that she is the one driving and has to focus on the road.

"It had to be the first grade," she says, trying to recall and trying not to be pulled back at the same time. "I remember those red shoes. It was just before my big Ariel phase."

Stiles is smiling like he's trying not to.

"We drove to Eichen House and my mom told me to stay in the car, but then they took so long so I..." Lydia swallows. "My grandmother was in the bathtub. There—there was so much blood, and the screwdriver—"

She breaks off. Across the car, Stiles' reflection in the passenger window has gone absolutely still.

"Was there anything else?" he asks quietly. Lydia has to take a breath before she can answer.

"She said, 'They're coming.'" She can feel him looking at her."'They're coming for us all.'"

Stiles is silent until she pulls up into the parking lot. "This was at Eichen House, right?"

Lydia nods. Stiles looks thoughtful, frustrated even; the dark suspicion from the other night rises up again. _something is wrong._

"And seeing Sydney's—seeing her triggered it?"

"Yes."

"Okay," Stiles says as they get out of the car. "Then what are we doing here if you've already had your supressed memory?"

"It wasn't the right memory," Lydia insists. "I remembered my grandmother at Eichen House. There was nothing to do with the surgery, nothing to do with Dread Doctors—" She still hates that they're calling them that. "So, if I read the book then why don't I have the full memory of my experience with them?"

"I'm not supposed to know that, am I?"

"No, something..." she continues, as if he hadn't spoken, "happened during the surgery but..." Lydia stops, aware suddenly that this is perhaps the first time she has truly acknowledged and accepted the truth, "I think maybe it has more to do with me being a banshee."

She's too busy thinking to catalogue Stiles' expression. And then she realizes.

"It's not my memory, Stiles." It makes so much more sense. "It's someone else's."

—

Thankfully Mrs. McCall ("Call me Melissa sweetheart, really.") is working when they follow Lydia's — what is she supposed to call it? — _sense_ through the main hospital entrance and down into a lower operating floor. She had taken one look at the two of them, standing before her in fierce bright red like partnered detectives on an investigation, and said, "Ten minutes," before handing them her access card. "Do not get caught with that."

But of course, with Lydia's luck, the lights are out.

"I thought this was an auditory thing," Stiles comments as she maneuvers carefully around the table. There's something in his tone, like he's waiting to pick a fight; Lydia ignores it.

"I still like to see what I'm hearing," is the best answer she has.

"Makes sense," he mutters, in a way that she knows means he does not understand at all, but Lydia appreciates it when he goes all the same.

She still is never sure what to look for, so it is almost a relief when the EKG machine starts to beep on its own.

It is not a relief however, to hear the name resonating from inside it.

 _Hayden._

She thinks of Liam's bright eyes and her heart aches.

—

Of course another kid was tortured in this room. Of course she has to watch it and feel sick to her stomach and be unable to move.

Of course he's the one that is not going to survive tonight.

She just knows.

Lydia has stopped questioning _how._

It doesn't matter how.

All that matters is what she can do, now.

—

When she finds Stiles later, sitting in a waiting room chair six floors up, he can barely look at her. All thoughts of the vision in the operating room vanish.

She has never seen him look so young, before.

It is a striking (and painful) thought.

"Stiles?"

He is just staring at the floor. Lydia has never seen him look so haunted; it frightens her, in some place deep and cold inside her heart that she has never been before.

"What happened?" she asks, "Where did you go?"

Stiles is quiet for a long time. "I uh, I had my memory."

Lydia just waits. She wants to take his hand, but he reaches up and scrubs both through his hair, dragging over his face.

"My mom—" Stiles breaks off, his eyes glassy, and Lydia's heart squeezes so painfully in her chest that it's hard to breathe. She watches him take a shuddering breath. "She was here a lot, when her dementia got really bad. She uh—" He swallows. "She went up to the roof once, when I was little. She told my dad—"

Lydia almost wants to tell him that he doesn't have to say it. But she can't get the words out in time.

"She told my dad she thought I was trying to kill her."

Lydia puts one hand on his back. She can't think of what there could possibly be to say.

"I'm sorry," she says finally, thinking of a ten year-old Stiles with the same bright eyes and probably the same red sweater, the picture of a mother's son (Lydia has seen Claudia Stilinski's photos in their home) and wants, more than anything, to be able to go back there and hold him, and tell him that everything would be alright.

That his mother loved him, no matter what.

But Lydia cannot do any of those things, and it is unexpectedly heartbreaking.

There is something else still in Stiles' gaze, but Lydia pushes back the old suspicion from earlier, prickling suddenly on the back of her neck.

"C'mon," she says gently. "Let's go find the others."

She smooths her hand up between his shoulderblades; it takes a beat or two before he gets up, but he goes.

Stiles drags his hand over his face again; Lydia pretends not to notice.

—

They get into his driveway before she can't hold it in anymore.

"Something else is wrong."

Even from the corner of her eye, Lydia can see Stiles swallowing a sarcastic remark — that her gravity pulls him down until his jaw is tight. "What are you talking about?"

She twists to face him even though it scares her, this new Stiles who is darkened by shadows that she cannot see. "Something's been wrong with you for days."

"Lydia—"

"Don't you lie to me Stiles Stilinski," she snaps, finding herself glaring despite some internal promise to keep calm. The Jeep, parked right next to her on the driveway, is one of their most sacred spaces. Even though this isn't the Jeep (where they'd be right now if not for its failing everything), Lydia will not rebuke that unspoken knowledge by yelling at him. "I—" she nearly falters. She cannot falter — not now. "I can see it. I—"

 _I know you._

Stiles' jaw has gone slack, something open in his expression making Lydia feel exposed, too. But she forges on.

"You're not okay."

He won't meet her eyes. Lydia has to duck her head, to reach across the gearshift through the space that feels like it spans ages, or miles. Stiles takes her hands, receives her fingers and palms and wrists in his, in a motion that is so graceful, so easy and familiar and instinctive that something inside Lydia's chest trembles.

It's almost as though they've done this before, like they've done it countless times; she will never know for certain how they arrived here, at this point where their hands intertwined is as familiar as her own heartbeat, but they are and she can only be grateful.

"You're not okay," she repeats, soft and careful. "And I understand if you can't tell me why. Not right now." He is still staring resolutely at their hands. "But whatever it is, whatever you feel like you can't talk about that you're scared is—" Stiles flinches. Lydia curls her fingers tighter around his. "—that you're scared is going to change everything, just know that _this_ —"

She squeezes his hands and tries again to find his eyes; they are like bottomless caverns and it takes effort not to get lost. "You and me, the pack — we're not going anywhere." That openness in Stiles' expression has given way to something broken and scared. Lydia summons a courage she can only only find with him (or with a bat in her hands) and lifts her hand to touch his cheek, to cradle his jaw and hold his gaze.

She's afraid to look at him, aware in some small corner of her heart that this may change everything, but she says it anyway. "There is _nothing_ that you could say or do that would make me turn my back on you, Stiles. Hear me?"

Stiles draws his free hand up, drawing his fingers up and down the inside of her wrist, like he's drowning and needs a mast to cling to. Even though he is still looking at her, Lydia is brought back so abruptly to her hospital room after Tracy that it steals the breath from her chest.

"You will never lose me." She wishes she could imprint her certainty into his skin so he'd never forget. "Not ever."

He looks, in the brief heartbeats before he speaks, like he's going to kiss her.

That same small corner of her heart would have let him.

"Thank you," he says, nearly a whisper. She thinks of the floor of the boy's locker room and the warmth of the sun and that same grateful surprise, as though Lydia would do anything less than everything she could.

Especially now, on the precipice of yet more darkness.

Above all, she is determined that Stiles, the most human of them all, will _survive._

He has to.

Lydia refuses to lose anyone else.

She finds that she can't quite speak; a careful smile is all she can manage.

"You should talk to your dad about the Jeep," she says, mustering a familiar blend of sarcasm and affection. "There's no way it's going to survive a state-wide pack relocation on duct tape and your sheer force of will."

He blinks at her. "You know the plan?"

She gives him her best, _I'm Lydia Martin_ look. She hasn't had to use it in a long time. "Of course I do." A beat. Lydia wants to squirm under the warmth of his gaze. "It's a good plan, Stiles." He stares as she unbuckles her seatbelt. "What?"

"Are you walking me in?"

She nearly glares at him. "Are you the only one with a monopoly on displays of concern?"

Stiles is smiling a little as he opens his door, which is a success if she's ever seen one. He touches one hand to her back as they pass the Jeep, his fingertips finding again the lines of her healing tattoo.

( _safe_ )

It won't last, Lydia knows. It never does.

But everyone needs something to hold onto.

* * *

 **More Notes:** did anyone else notice that all of their ressurfaced memories are from a very traumatic childhood event? because no wonder they're all struggling so bad now like god could you rip my heart out any more dylan o'brien like WHY CAN'T WE HAVE NICE STILINSKI FAMILY FEELINGS WHY DO YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME THIS SHIT JEFF DAVIS I AM FRAGILE.

I am shipper trash. This season is going to kill me.

Annie


End file.
